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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25373011">Theradina's Tale</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/forevertraveller/pseuds/forevertraveller'>forevertraveller</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>ForeverTraveller Dragon Age Universe [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: The Last Court</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bisexual Female Character, Dalish Clans - Freeform, Dalish Courtship, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Dalish Elves, Dalish Lore, Dalish Origin, Elven Skirmishes, Elvhen, Elvhen Language, Gen, Multiple Wardens (Dragon Age), Original Dalish Clans, Other, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 10:07:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,483</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25373011</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/forevertraveller/pseuds/forevertraveller</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The life and times of the ambitious warrior, Theradina Mahariel, opening with her waiting to start out on an adventure with Tamlen, her oldest friend and unrequited love. In future chapters, I will be exploring the Sabrae clan, Theradina's character, and adding to a larger story of the Fifth Blight and subsequent events from her perspective. There may also be flashbacks. Tags/relationships/warnings will be updated.</p><p>The Last Court is in the tags because Theradina's past includes a war I made up based on lore from it: allied Dalish clans each contributing to an ongoing struggle to eliminate the Forgotten Ones worshipping elves found in the Tirashan. A faint echo of the wars fought in ancient Elvhenan long before it fell.</p><p> Reviews, Dragon Age discussion, and ideas are very welcome, I may write often for my work, but this is my first time writing fiction or creating anything Dragon Age!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mahariel &amp; Tamlen (Dragon Age), Mahariel/Tamlen (Dragon Age)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>ForeverTraveller Dragon Age Universe [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1837408</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Theradina's Tale</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Theradina reflects on who she is, and her love for Tamlen, while waiting on him to show for their latest secret adventure. </p><p>Language notes: bor'asaan (bow), dal'thanu (war-axe), dar'misaan (longsword) and dar'misu (dagger), hanal'falon (possible word for "golden" taken from hanal'ghilan="pathfinder"=golden halla, plus falon for friend; invented to be a Dalish term for best friend), da'len (child/children/little one), hahren (elder/elders), mamae (mother), aravel (landship, a mobile halla-drawn dwelling), Halamshiral ("End of the Journey", capitol city of the Dalish lands before the Orlesian Chantry's Exalted March in the 2nd Age destroyed the elven Dales), vallaslin (blood-writing, Dalish face tattoos honouring the Creators), vallaslin'amythal blood-writing of Mythal, using the 'amythal found in "dahl'amythal" translated as the "tree of Mythal", evanura (leader, commander, general... I don't know if it really means this in Dalish dialects, but I think it should)</p><p>.<br/>.<br/>.<br/>.<br/>.<br/>.<br/>.<br/>.<br/></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>High summer's night air in the Brecilian Forest sticks close, still and thick with a fine mist. Midday tomorrow will be scorching, but for now it is relatively cool. With a few battle-tested pieces added to her light-weight guard's leathers, and armed with her bor'asaan, dal'thanu, dar'misaan and dar'misu, Theradina is well prepared. She enters their appointed spot, a meadow near to camp but far enough away for words not to carry. The lush dewy grass is pushed down here and there with sleeping halla. </p><p>Restless waiting, she fixes her stubborn hair into a better approximation of a tight bun. She fiddles with, then re-secures her bracers. Traces the arc of the scar cutting pale over bronze on her right palm before pulling on her archery gloves. Sets a new string taut over her borrowed bow and tests it in a long-held dry draw, testing at the same time her own strength, all while still scanning the forest edge back the way she came. Practising patience, she slowly relaxes her draw and measures her breath.</p><p>One moon is new and dark, the other already well hidden this late in the night. The clearing is lit only by the stars. She spots Tamlen by the twin luminescence of his eyes long before she would be able to discern his form or face, but she knows it is him. She watches the tiny flashes of green, then gold, blue, silver, amber, red... and finds herself moved by this common sight. The People are truly graced, even having lost so much. Eyes bright enough to catch the faded Sun's spilled and speckled blood, and to see so clearly by it alone, through these darkest nights. By this same light they will explore and hunt, the two of them, together. She catches a sigh in her throat before it takes flight. No good showing how foolish she is for this man. It only pushes him away.</p><p>Theradina is a warrior and a veteran of the latest war in the Tirashan against the vile and rabid heretics. There, at only the age of nineteen she made a name for herself on the Southern Front, thoroughly proving the virtues of her freshly-wrought vallaslin'amythal by protecting her comrades with valour. Now, she is apprenticed First to War-Leader Ashalle, the formidable woman who raised her. She is twenty-five years old, and not at all inexperienced, even if most of Sabrae who were not in the war still treat her like a wayward child. </p><p>To have fallen so low in hopeless, unrequited love... by the gods, she never thought herself the type. But Tamlen is. . . </p><p>Tamlen had always been her hanal'falon, loyal and true. When she was eight, and too many hahren had piled into Ashalle's too-small aravel to "help" explain how her parents had died, he had been the first she told, feeling strange and alone and under pressure from all their anxious pity and mature gravity. His response was to propose they go take over a defensible hill she had spotted nearby and found their own Halamshiral. They did, building from rubble and discarded materials, and a grand time was had by all.</p><p>Then when she was thirteen and he was twelve, he had been the one to confess to her, after overhearing a stray remark, that the hahren and Keeper and even Ashalle had lied, and how her mamae had left to wander alone in grief. He had his own loving parents and did not know her pain, but stood by her still, even if the other da'len fled her fits of rage.</p><p>No matter what he'd thought of it, he had uttered not a single snide remark when the whole clan tutted her refusal to meet her mamae's kin from clan Ghilain. All she'd had left for close family, as her father's people were split between his late father's distant clan, and his late mother's people, a line which between more untimely death and lack of children, had dwindled. Distant relations both in and out of her clan did not mean much.</p><p>Keeper Auvenon had been last in the line of the brave Mahariel, Emerald Knight to her Lady Sabrae. The People did not often keep lineage names, and when they did, it meant more than ties of blood. It was a legacy, a purpose, something that could only be passed down from guardian to child in long years of dedicated tutelage. Something, for all Ashalle's expert battle skill and friendship with Auvenon, she never could have to give. </p><p>But Tamlen had encouraged her to claim the name at her vallaslin ceremony, had insisted she deserved to take pride in it. She resolved to define the new ideals and duty of Mahariel, no matter what sacred knowledge had died with Auvenon. Tamlen had also given her reason to hope they could discover more about her forebears, together. At his ceremony he had chosen to honour Dirthamen and pledged, among other things, to help her restore Mahariel's lost teachings. She swore to protect him in battle. Or, rather, she had sworn to protect them all, while looking at him. It had felt like an exchange of vows to her, a bonding, even if it wasn't. </p><p>They had discussed their choices for patron Creators late into the night, many nights. She had composed her dedication to Mythal in conversation with him, considering Justice and Vengeance, Leadership and Glory, All-Mother and All-Father... it had been a close decision, and a very personal one. He had also bolstered her petition to flourish her Mythal's tree with six of Elgar'nan's thorns, something not found in the traditional patterns of Sabrae, with his passion for history and theology. </p><p>Riding home after the war four years later, they helped liberate the territory of clan Briathos from Orlesian bandits, interrogated an Avvar trader about her father's killers, and even looted a 'vint caravan, leaving it a smouldering wreck. Theirs was a band fifteen strong, all of them fine warriors and scouts, but she had led. Tamlen had been the one to nominate her for that role, when they had first left for the Tirashan. Now he plans these foolhardy midnight expeditions for her, to help her calm her jitters and adjust to life back "at peace" in the clan.</p><p>She finds him to be clever, comely, sarcastic and assertive. They share the same adventures, impulses, attitudes, interests... Tamlen is more enamoured of ruins, secrets and ancient things, and she cares most for battle and strategy, but these small differences only serve to deepen her affections. Perhaps she would have never paused to know or care for the true splendour of the ancestors if he hadn't drawn her so far into it. And she knows he appreciates her, respects her superior martial skill and supports her ambitions. He even once performed a ballad boasting of her heroics before the evening fire, praising her as evanura, and graciously accepted her reciprocal gift of a fine pommel inset with a garnet prised directly from the mud of Briathos' Steps, if you believed their Keeper Hawen. Nothing short of a perfect suitor. </p><p>The problem is, he does not love her in the way she wants. </p><p>He knows how she feels, she is almost sure of it, but becomes curt and evasive whenever she shows her interest. He does not speak plainly, just brandishes that great weapon — awkward disapproval and hints at a withdrawal of his companionship, and she shrinks back into silent pining. If he would only just let her say her piece, and then refuse her outright, she could move on! But instead it seems he cannot face the moment, and so prevents her from having it too. It is maddening how her attraction does not fade, despite this. </p><p>But she knows she is strong, and if his lack of interest is unchanging she can quietly outlast this folly of her heart. On that day, she will look back and count as a battle-scar her suffering and attention spent in this unyielding pursuit, a romantic loss of her senses brought on by attending too many bonding ceremonies, or her impatience with the dullness of camp. She will look to Tamlen as a great friend and smile, content, leading a great host of warriors, bringing justice to the betrayers squatting in their undeserved palaces and shem-shacks alike, once and for all, in the great reckoning to come. Tamlen will help her know which of the humble they can spare. It is cunning knowledge and wisdom, after-all, which allows for mercy and justice in a victorious commander.</p><p>Carefully, casually, without glancing up to watch as she hears his footsteps through the meadow-grass draw near, she counts the arrows in her main quiver. Five sets of five... twenty-five. Huh. Okay, she can remember that. It's best to know precisely, and to count down as you fire, so you know where you stand.</p><p>.<br/>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>Thank you for reading this first part! </p><p>Please note that Theradina is not meant to be a flawlessly wise or omniscient protagonist — she has a very specific self-focused perspective, and has not tempered a certain youthful grandiosity. Same will go for Tamlen and many other characters. </p><p>I started writing this, actually, after noticing his strangely put-upon tone in response to Mahariel's attempt to flirt with him in the Dalish Origin. It reminded me so much of someone who knows their friend loves them, but doesn't reciprocate and is afraid to say, so keeps passive-aggressively warding them off. I know he is meant to be indicating that he actually does welcome her interest, but wow does it not sound that way to me. </p><p>The "latest war in the Tirashan" mentioned in this is speculation based on elements of "The Last Court", where elves living in the Tirashan forest with red vallaslin are raiders, fighting ferociously and calling out to their gods who are assumed to be Forgotten ones... Anaris, Geldauran, Daern'thal, and the others. To most regular Dalish clans, this would be extreme heresy, a direct threat if they attack fellow elves, and a major indirect threat from affected humans retaliating against any elves in response to their raids. So it makes sense to me that at least some allied clans will have fought to contain or try to eliminate them, whether they are actually "evil" or not. </p><p>Part of these stories about Theradina will discuss what non-Dalish see as incomprehensible "elven skirmishes", what I imagine uniquely Dalish combat actually looks like, and how multiple Dalish clans form alliances to declare and carry out war together and the politics of that.</p><p>I have NOT decided if Tamlen in these stories dies at the eluvian, or survives long enough to also be made a Warden. Whether or not he does, in my mind right now, he and Theradina do not ever actually get together. Instead, she will romance someone as a Warden. Not sure who, yet, besides the fact that she will develop a strong and immediate, if confusing, crush on Morrigan. I'm open to reader participation in these decisions through comments, though. </p><p>On my own, I think I'll leave many of these chances at success or failure to old-fashioned dice rolls.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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